Rip’N Spin Factor

The Spin Factor by Rip’N is a binding adaptor disk which mounts between your bindings and board allowing you to change the stance of your front foot. Rip’N’s brochure touts their adaptor as a convenience device “to improve the freestyle performance of your set up, skate better on the flats or experiment with more comfortable positions.” It’s also marketed to rental shops as a way to make binding adjustment easy as well as “shorten the learning curve for beginners.”

Certainly stance adjustment on the fly is a noble endeavor (despite the fact that only the front foot adjusts on this system), but skating on a snowboard with your foot pointing forward is bogusàƒ,à‚†¹there’s absolutely no edge control with your toes and heels in the middle of the board and is truly a detriment to the learning curve of any budding snowboarder.

Alas the Rip’N Spin’s downfalls are so numerous I’m forced to bullet:

The adjustable front disk alone weighs in at just over one and a quarter pounds, while the whole set-up is just shy of two pounds. I can only imagine the extent of gravity’s pull with two rotating adaptors mounted on a rental board.

Once you adjust the adaptor to whatever angle you choose, there’s no memoryàƒ,à‚†¹no way to find an angle you liked before except by playing with it.

Along the same lines, the only way to adjust the disk is by pulling the lever and moving your foot. That means once you are on the chair with your foot pointing forward you have two choices for chair unload: risk falling off the chair as you reach down to pull the lever to rotate your foot back to riding position, or leave your foot straight forward and fall after you get off the chair becuase you had no edge control. A simple detint would be a vast improvement.

It’s made out of plastic and over half an inch highàƒ,à‚†¹not to mention the thickness of your binding. Even without the play in the system, that makes for a lot of flex while riding.

Despite Rip’N’s claim that the Spin Factor’s “revolutionary capabilities. . . will not only enhance the Snowboarder’s experience but ” I’ve found this product to be poorly designed and bent on separating naive snowboarders and rental-shop managers from their money. To quote Avalanche’s Chris Sanders “Why substitute 15 feet of convenience for 5000 feet of performance?” Why indeed when even the convenience sucks?